Scientology reaches into schools through Narconon

Boston Herald/March 3, 1998
By Joseph Mallia

An organization with ties to the Church of Scientology is recruiting
New England schoolchildren for what critics say is an unproven - and
possibly
dangerous - anti-drug program.
And the group - Narconon
Inc. of Everett - is being paid with taxpayer
dollars without disclosing
its Scientology connections.
Narconon was paid at least $ 942,853
over an eight-year period for delivering
anti-drug lectures at public and
parochial schools throughout the region,
according to federal income tax
documents.
The money came from fees paid by schools and from
nearly 100 sponsoring
businesses, including BankBoston, Nynex and
Polaroid.
The main Narconon lecturer, Scientologist Bobby
Wiggins, has taught children
as recently as the current school year at
Southeast Elementary School in
Leominster, under the sponsorship of
BankBoston.
He has also lectured at most of Everett's schools, at
Dearborn Middle
School in Roxbury, at Marshall Middle School in Lynn, at
Maynard High School
and dozens of other schools, a Narconon employee told
the Herald.
"We do a lot of Catholic schools. We've been
doing Archbishop Williams
for years," said Narconon employee Jeanne
Mack, referring to a Catholic
high school in Braintree.
Narconon
has also given anti-drug lectures at Arlington, Gloucester and
Marshfield
high schools and at Swampscott and Lancaster middle schools,
according to
a Narconon list.
At a lecture at Chelmsford High School attended
by the Herald, Wiggins
praised the benefits of a detoxification program
that involves sauna and
vitamin treatments.
But what the
Scientologist did not disclose to the Chelmsford teachers,
administrators
or students is that the $ 1,200 detoxification regimen is
actually a
religious program the Church of Scientology calls the Purification
Rundown.
In fact, he never mentioned the word
"Scientology," or L. Ron
Hubbard's name during the
lectures.
"I took an IQ test before and after, and the score
shot up 22 points,"
Wiggins said during the Chelmsford drug
awareness lecture, referring to
the benefits of the Purification
Rundown.
"My energy level quadrupled. I could think about 10
times faster,"
Wiggins boasted. But according to health experts, the
Scientology detox
program is untested and possibly
health-threatening.

The Rundown

The method
requires vigorous exercise, five hours of saunas, megadoses
of up to
5,000 mg of niacin, and doses of cooking oil. This regimen is repeated
daily for two or three weeks. Every Scientologist, including young
children,
must go through this detox procedure as an "introductory
service"
- a first step in the church's high-priced teachings,
according to church
documents and ex-members.
"The idea of
sweating out poisons is kind of an old wives' tale,"
said William
Jarvis, a professor of public health at Loma Linda University
in Southern
California. "It's all pretty hokey."
Salt and water are
the only substances that the Purification Rundown
removes from the body,
according to a 1990 U.S. Food and Drug Administration
report, Jarvis
said.
"Narconon's program is not safe," the Oklahoma
Board of Mental
Health said in a 1992 rejection of Chilocco New Life
Center, a Scientology
residential hospital on an Indian reservation in
Newkirk, Okla.
"No scientifically well-controlled studies
were found that documented
the safety of the Narconon program," the
board said.
Yet Scientology's founder claimed the sauna regimen
can do much more
than rid the body of drugs - it can cure radiation
sickness.
"Radiation is apparently enormously water-soluble
as well as water
removable," Hubbard wrote in an edition of
"Clear Body, Clear
Mind," obtained at the Boston Public
Library.
Agent Orange and cancer-causing PCBs can also be
neutralized through
the detox method, Scientologists claim.
"WHAMO! Something miraculous happened! Damned if I didn't begin
to feel better," wrote one Scientologist in Hubbard's book, who said
he watched a nuclear explosion as a soldier. "There is new hope for
radiation victims! I'm the living proof of it!"
Even the
Rev. Heber C. Jentzsch, president of the Church of Scientology
International in Los Angeles, said in an interview with the Heraldthat
the Purification Rundown saved his life by ridding his body of radiation
sickness that he contracted from exposure to nuclear testing in Utah when
he was a child.
About 100,000 people have done the Purification
program, Scientologists
claim.
And Kirstie Alley of
"Cheers" fame - star of the sitcom "Veronica's
Closet" - is Narconon's international spokeswoman. A longtime
Scientologist,
she says the anti-drug program's Purification Rundown
saved her life by
helping her kick a cocaine habit.

The connection

Top Scientology officials at the church's nerve
center, the Religious
Technology Center, deny any connection
toNarconon.
"The definitive answer is RTC doesn't have
anything to do with them,"
RTC President Warren L. McShane said in a
letter to the Herald.
"I've checked my files, we have never
had a licensing agreement
with them or any secular group," McShane
said.
But the RTC clearly states on all Scientology literature
that the Purification
Rundown is a registered trademark used only with
its permission.
Also, L. Ron Hubbard's name is trademarked by the
RTC, and all his books
are copyrighted by another key Scientology
organization called the L. Ron
Hubbard Library. Hubbard's name and his
writings may only be used with permission,
according to numerous
Scientology publications.
Robert Vaughn Young, a former top
Scientology official, said it is common
knowledge among top
Scientologists that the RTC strictly controls Narconon
through licensing
agreements.
Also, church documents say the RTC is "protector
of the religion"
ensuring "purity of application" of
Hubbard's teachings, with
an "Inspector General Network" to
enforce RTC rules.
A Herald reporter, during a visit to
Narconon's Everett office, saw stacks
of L. Ron Hubbard's book,
"Clear Body, Clear Mind," and many other
materials carrying
Hubbard's name.
Also, the Everett office's top staff - including
Wiggins and Narconon
Treasurer Susan Birkenshaw, who live at the same
Jamaica Plain address -
is made up entirely of Scientologists, Mack
said.
Further, the church as a whole makes no secret that the
Purification
Rundown is a first step onto its "Bridge to Total
Freedom." The
Purification method is clearly marked on the
"Bridge" in a 1994
edition of the church's introductory
textbook "The Scientology Handbook"
in the Boston Public
Library's collection.
The textbook chart makes it clear that
church members must undergo the
Purification Rundown to advance
spiritually within Scientology - and the
only places to get the
Purification Rundown is at the church's Beacon Street
headquarters,
Narconon in Everett and at a Scientology-run company called
Healthmed of
California.

The costs

Wiggins teaches drug
awareness at about 100 schools a year in Massachusetts,
New Hampshire,
Vermont and Rhode Island, and he lectures for teachers' associations,
Mack said.
While Narconon has been active in other school
districts - including
the Idaho public schools, according to a 1990
article in the journal "The
Southern California Psychiatrist" -
the New England operation may be
its most successful in the U.S.,
according to Scientology critics.
Both Wiggins and Birkenshaw
were paid $ 16,000 salaries in 1994, according
to federal tax
records.
The Purification Rundown and the detox treatment costs
about $ 1,200
at the Church of Scientology in Boston, which uses a sauna
in the basement
of its Beacon Street building near the Charles River.
And a glossy brochure in Narconon's Everett office offers an
intensive,
in-patient purification program for $ 18,500 - including
"withdrawal
services" - at the Oklahoma hospital.
In
Scientology, salesmen like Wiggins are called "Field Service
Members," (FSMs) and are paid a percentage of any courses bought
from
the church by people they recruit, said Dennis Erlich, a Scientology
Church
defector.
FSMs are paid a commission of 10-35 percent of
what their recruits spend
on church training, according to a Dec. 29,
1997, memo written by Commander
Sherry Murphy of the Church of
Scientology's Fields Executive International
division.
"If
he recruits, he gets a 10-15 percent straight sales commission,"
said Erlich, who was a top Scientology trainer for 15 years. "He
gets
the commission on everything that the person purchases from then on,
of
Scientology auditing and training," he said.
And Wiggins
has a very active history with Narconon - as of 1997 he had
lectured
before a total of 375,000 people, according to the Church of
Scientology.
Schools pay $ 200-$ 300 for short lectures by
Wiggins, Mack said.
And for full-day peer leadership programs,
that include many hours of
Scientology methods, schools pay $ 750-$
1,200, with many of these payments
coming from school budgets, Mack said.
Peer leaders are taught Scientology
methods of communication, study,
personality development and "ethics
technology."
Wiggins is promoted as Narconon's top national speaker in a videotape
recently released by Narconon International's headquarters in Los
Angeles.
A Narconon Internet site offers the Wiggins video for sale, and
Narconon
employees use the Internet to recruit new members.
Federal income tax records show Narconon Inc. of Massachusetts earned
$715,771 for school lectures from 1989-1994. More recent income tax
information
could not be obtained. About one-third of that income came
directly from
public and Catholic schools, and the rest from charitable
donors, according
to the tax records.
Those donors making recent
donations include NYNEX, the Polaroid Foundation
and Danvers Savings
Bank, Jeanne Mack said. The Thomas Anthony Pappas Charitable
Foundation
of Belmont gave $ 10,000 to Narconon in 1991, and $ 15,000 in
1992, tax
records show.
The Pappas Foundation declined to comment, and
Polaroid said it could
not find a record of corporate grants did not
return calls. The Danvers
Savings Bank has donated $ 100 to $ 250 to
Narconon every year since the
late 1980s, but had not been aware that the
group was linked to the Church
of Scientology, a bank official said.
And Narconon did not disclose any Scientology links in its grant
applications
from Bell Atlantic, formerly Nynex, which gave Narconon a
total of $ 15,000
in 1991, 1996 and 1997, said Bell Atlantic spokesman
Jack Hoey.
"There is no reference to the Church of
Scientology" in Narconon's
grant applications to Bell Atlantic, Hoey
said. However, the church's founder,
L. Ron Hubbard, is mentioned several
times, he said.
"The fact that there is a religious
affiliation doesn't mean the
application wouldn't be approved," said
Hoey, adding that future grant
applications from Narconon will be
screened closely.

The schools

Although Wiggins has lectured about Scientology's purification ideas
in the Boston Public Schools and across New England, several school
officials,
including Boston schools Superintendent Thomas Payzant, told
the Herald
they were unaware that Narconon was connected to the Church of
Scientology.
"My standard is that there should be no
misrepresentation,"
Payzant said.
"I think it's
inappropriate for any religious group, under the guise
of some other
purpose, to use the public schools as a setting to promote
some
particular religion," the superintendent said.
Payzant said
he will look into whether Narconon speakers violated school
policy by not
disclosing links to the Church of Scientology.
Church critics
were appalled to learn that Scientologists were being
welcomed into New
England schools.
"If they're going into the schools, they're
really messing with
the children's minds," said Erlich.
Young, the church defector, said he does not object to drug-awareness
speakers like Wiggins going into the schools - as long as they tell
parents
and headmasters that Narconon is connected to the Church of
Scientology.
Steve Hassan, a Scientology critic and author of the
book "Combatting
Cult Mind Control," said, "I'm very
worried that Scientology is
infiltrating schools and I think they need to
be exposed,"
And Jarvis, the public health professor, was
astonished that Scientologists
are invited into the classroom.
"Any school administration that would allow a group as
ideological
as that to come into their schools is irresponsible and
naive," he
said.
"They make a big deal about prayer in
school, and then they let
this religious group in?" said Jarvis.
But Wiggins is a hit with the students.
At Chelmsford High he
told his own story - of using, abusing and selling
drugs - punctuating
his monologue with jokes and making amusing noises with
the
microphone.
He said he first smoked marijuana at age 11. He did
LSD and cocaine.
He became a drug dealer. His life was a mess, he said,
but he turned it
around in 1977 when he turned to Narconon.
"It was great," Chelmsford student Becky Friedman said after
a Narconon lecture.
"I liked it so much I stayed
again," said another student,
Valerie Perry.
Scientology
critics say 50-75 percent of those who undergo full Narconon
training
become Scientologists.
But Rev. Jentzsch said only about 6
percent become members. In any case,
he said, the church does not recruit
children.
"Children can't become a member of the Church of
Scientology unless
they have parental permission, and that's very
rare," Jentzsch said.
Most people who join Scientology are 25-35
years old, he said.
But at least one Everett High School student
was recruited into the Narconon
program, Jeanne Mack said. She declined
to name the student, a girl, citing
confidentiality concerns, but said
the student was expected to learn office
skills and Narconon
teachings.
Narconon tries to hire and train students from many of
the high schools
it
visits, Mack said.

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